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A Glossary of Tillich Terms
Edited By Robert E. Chiles

A GROUP of lay people compiled this glossary in the Study Program of the Concord Methodist Church, Dayton, Ohio. They met together for twelve weeks to read and discuss Existence and the Christ, Volume II of Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology. As the seminar progressed, its members noted down new and distinctively-used words on whose understanding the argument seemed to rest. From their lists the words to be included in the glossary were selected. The thirteen members of the seminar divided into four work groups, each of which met separately to read, discuss, define, and re-define the words assigned to them. Final formulations were made in conference with the seminar leader. Those who participated are Julia Bostic, Marian Brandon, Carol Browne, Jane Capstick, Charlotte Deardorf, Neal Doggett, jean Gildow, Nancygayl Hill, William Hill, Bud Miller, Robert Rector, Bettysue Sellers, and Rolland Wolfe.

The words defined are those felt to be most critical for Volume II. Terms more basic to Volume I are treated briefly if they reappear significantly in the second volume. Occasionally it has been necessary to attempt to anticipate meanings whose full discussion must await the publication of Volume III.

Initial formulations sought to express the meaning of the words in "non-Tillichian" terms. The precision demanded by the system led to the surrender of this effort in large part, and to the procedure of placing words in their wider context in the system. Therefore, the glossary is circular. To understand the meaning of one word it is generally necessary to refer to several others. Such procedure would seem to be in keeping with Tillich's concept of the "theological circle."

Obviously, this glossary is of little value apart from serious encounter with Tillich's writing itself. If others receive a fraction of the benefit from its use that the persons received who compiled it, its worth will be amply established. Wider acquaintance with the creative and provocative thought of one of the great interpreters

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of the Christian faith in our time will benefit all who share it and will set forward the New Being, the concern and dynamic of his work.

ACTUALIZATION: The process of making potentialities realities. It is the willful decision in which man, exercising his finite freedom, decides to end his state of innocence. It is the victory of man's finite freedom over his desire to preserve his state of dreaming innocence, thus leading to the transition from essence to existence. Every individual act by man is an actualization of freedom set in a context of universal destiny.

AROUSED FREEDOM: In the state of dreaming innocence man's freedom and destiny are united harmoniously with each other. Neither has been made real. When man becomes anxiously aware of his finite freedom he experiences a desire to make his freedom an actuality. This desire to actualize his potentiality is aroused freedom. But in that same moment of aroused freedom, he also experiences the desire to remain in his state of innocence. Universally he decides for the actualization of his freedom and falls into estranged existence.

ANXIETY: The threat of non-being, experienced as the awareness of being finite and conditioned. It expresses the awareness of being limited in time (being forced to die), space, causality, and substance. Man is anxiously aware of false being; i.e., of not being what God meant him to be (as defined in the polarities of destiny and freedom, individualization and participation, dynamics and form); this awareness produces despair (guilt and anxiety). Anxiety can be absorbed by courage which man receives through heritage and through reunion with God. Anxiety should not be confused with fear, which has a definite object (danger, pain, enemies) and can be conquered by action.

BEING: Basis of the experience of what it means "to be" as over against the threat of non-being. It is the power to resist nonbeing. Being itself is "before" or "prior" to the split that characterizes finite being; it is beyond the polarity of finite and infinite. It is the beginning without a beginning; the end without an end, the initial power of everything. In this system being is used in three ways. (1) God is being itself, the ground and power of all being. (2) Man is being, created by God. In man the distinction is made between his essential and existential being; he is a split

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being. (3) Christ is the manifestation of the New Being actualized by the Divine Spirit which heals the rift in man's being.

BONDAGE OF THE WILL: This applies only to man because only man has finite freedom open to the influences of his estrangement. It is the inability of man to break through his estrangement to achieve reunion with God. It is the inability of man's freedom to guide his motives in a centered decision, due to internal compulsions of existential estrangement moving against each other. Therefore, man's bondage can be broken only by participation in the New Being. New being must precede new acting.

CENTERED SELF: Only man is able to transcend (look beyond) himself and behold both himself and his world as objects. In self-centeredness man places himself at the center of all being and envisions all Other persons and things as part of a structured world centered about himself. But self and world are in polar unity. The self is not a self except as it is a part of the world in which it lives. Under the conditions of estrangement the fact that man is a centered self becomes the basis for hubris, the striving to take the world into himself.

CONCUPISCENCE: One of the expressions of estrangement from God (see unbelief and hubris). It is the unlimited desire to draw the whole of one's world into oneself. It is the desire to elevate one's finitude to infinity. Man has these desires because he is separated from the whole. The temptation to concupiscence is the imagined possibility of reaching unlimited abundance. The result is emptiness and despair, for the unlimited desire can never be satisfied. The desire for knowledge, sex, wealth, and power are symptoms of concupiscence when they have an unlimited character. Concupiscence wants its own pleasure through another being but does not want the other being (the denial of love).

CORRELATION: A question and answer method used in systematic theology whereby questions arising from man's existential predicament which are independent of theology (but with a common ground) are related to theological answers, which in turn imply further questions existentially. This method of dependence and interdependence of questions and answers is not free from error and, to some extent, like all of life, is ambiguous.

DEMONIC: The mythical expression of a power of reality which has been estranged from the Divine Source and has become a structure

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of self-destruction. It indicates those structures of evil producing anxiety in man's nature. It indicates the powers of sin and evil that oppose man's reunion with God. It describes the reduction of the Divine to human measures and manipulations. It is the elevation of the desire for unlimited knowledge and power, which leads to man's separation from God and finally to self-destruction.

DESPAIR: The state of inescapable conflict between what man essentially is and ought to be, and what he actually is and cannot help ("without hope"; "no exit"). It is losing one's meaning for existence and being unable to recover it. It is the state of meaninglessness leading to paths of self-destruction in a vain attempt to escape (suicide). It is the absence of the sense of power of being. It is the final consequence or index of man's existence in estrangement. It is the point where man has come to the end of his possibilities. In despair God is experienced as standing against man in "wrath" and "condemnation."

DESTINY: This stands in polar relationship to freedom; only he who is free has a destiny. It points not to the opposite of freedom, but rather to its conditions and limitations. It is that out of which decisions arise; the totality of one's being-body structures, psychic striving, spiritual character. It is the self as shaped by nature, history, and former decisions. It is not a strange power outside that brings things to pass (meaningless fate). Destiny is the basis of freedom; freedom participates in shaping destiny. In existential estrangement destiny keeps freedom in bondage. Without a deciding center destiny becomes mechanical necessity; that is, determination by internal compulsions and external causes.

DIALECTICAL: One of the three tools of theology which express the truth about God-rational, dialectical and paradoxical. Dialectical thinking is rational thought that enters and participates in the inner tensions of realities. Dialectical description drives from one element of a concept to another until it reaches the deepest level. It is not satisfied to accept what appears on the surface. It makes use of questions and answers and mediates between them many times in the search for a satisfactory concept. All life processes share the dialectic of going forth and returning.

DREAMING INNOCENCE: Man's uncontested and undecided potentialities, illustrated by "utopia" or "paradise" in which there are no conflicts; it should not be equated with perfection. It precedes

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existence (never really exists as such in history) but has potentiality (or that which is real and non-real at the same time) for all of existence. It is freedom and destiny in the harmony of undecided potentiality. The experience of the possibility of temptation ends the state of innocence as man in his finite freedom decides for self-actualization.

ESSENCE: That from which being has "fallen"; the true, undistorted nature of things. Essence is the original goodness of everything created; the norm by which a thing must be judged; it empowers and judges that which exists. It is only experienced in a distorted form in existence, but it is never destroyed. Essence is not an actual stage of human development but the unrealized state (potentiality) in which there is no conflict or anxiety about the limitations of life (essential finitude). God is beyond the distinction between essence and existence.

ESSENTIAL AND EXISTENTIAL: Two levels of reality which are expressed in the duality of man's nature. Man's essential being, his undistorted potential character, must be known in order to understand his existential being which is distorted, estranged, and actual. The transition from essential to existential being is a fact that cannot be understood in terms of necessity but rather has the characteristics of a leap, fall, or gap.

EXISTENCE: In existence, creative goodness, the essential structure of reality, is split and distorted. It has left the state of potentiality and become actual. Existence means to stand out of non-being. It is actualized freedom (in accord with destiny), choosing to stand out of the Divine life, though never totally separated from it. It is always mixed ambiguously with the essential structure and power of life. It involves the danger of self-loss. Existence is the point where creation and the fall coincide. It is not proper to talk about the existence of God; He is Being itself, beyond the distinction between essence and existence.

EXISTENTIALISM: A philosophy which describes our human situation. It analyzes the old con, the "fallen" character of things, the predicament of man, and the world in the state of separation from essential nature. Existentialism views history as a series of unreconciled conflicts which threaten man with self-destruction. From its analysis of the human situation, existentialism does not offer answers; these come from beyond the existentialist analysis.

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Rather, it develops the questions implied in existence. In reality, it is neither atheistic nor theistic. (Cf. Essentialism: the view that the actualization and fulfillment of potentiality is not a fall; existence is as it is essentially intended to be.)

ESTRANGEMENT: The result of the transition from essence to existence; the condition "after" the "fall"; a reinterpretation of the doctrine of sin. Man is cut off from the ground of his being and, consequently, from other beings and from himself. As he exists, he is not what he essentially is and ought to be; yet he is not a stranger to his true being-for he belongs to it and is judged by it. Estrangement is expressed as unbelief, the turning of the total self away from God; as hubris, the elevation of the self to the center of life; and as concupiscence, the unlimited desire to draw the whole of one's world into oneself. Love, as the striving for the reunion of the separated, is the opposite of estrangement.

FAITH: The state of being grasped by an ultimate. The person participates in the state with his entire personality, including theoretical, practical, and emotional elements. Faith is the opposite of unbelief, it is an act or state in which man in his total being turns toward God. Faith has an "in spite of" character-accepting that one is accepted in spite of estrangement and despair. The reunion with God thus established is "reconciliation." Faith is not a human act, it is the work of the Divine Spirit, Faith is participation in the New Being, which "grasps and draws into itself"; in this new reality the split in man's being is healed in principle and preliminary ways, and he is a new creature.

FALL: A symbol of the universal predicament of man; it does not refer to a specific event in history, but points to the gap between what is and what ought to be. In the Genesis myth the psychological-ethical character of the fall is elaborated, showing the free side of man's fall as an individual event. The myth of the transcendent fall (the ontological description of the transition from essence to existence) depicts the tragic destiny side of the fall as a universal event. The fall involves the actualization of finite freedom within tragic destiny. It characterizes all of existence; in this sense, creation and the fall are said to coincide. The fall cannot be logically "explained" or derived from that which has gone before. It is a fact to be indicated, a story to be told.

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FINITE FREEDOM: Freedom in unity with finitude is existence. Finite freedom is the turning point from potential being to actualized existence (the possibility of transition from essence to existence). It can be said that God is infinite freedom; nature is finite necessity; and that man is finite freedom. Man is free in so far as he has language and the power of deliberating and deciding. He is free to surrender his humanity. All potentialities which constitute man's freedom are limited by freedom's opposite pole, his destiny. Finite freedom is always actualized within the frame of universal destiny.

FINITUDE: Being in process of coming from and going toward nonbeing. It is the realization that we come from nothing and return to nothing. Finitude characterizes being in its essential nature. To be something is to be finite. Man is able to transcend his finitude in the awareness that lie belongs to the infinite. Finitude is experienced by the creature who is placed within the limitations of time and space as anxiety which is the inevitable product of these limitations. The experience of finitude drives man to ask the question of Being or God.

GRACE: Qualifies all relations between God and man in such a way that they are freely inaugurated by God and in no way depend upon anything the creature does or desires. It is forgiveness received in the center of one's personality. The divine love in relation to the unjust creature is grace; it is total acceptance by God of the unacceptable. As the infusion of love, grace is the power which overcomes and reunites the separation caused by sin between God and man. Grace may be thought of as functioning in two ways: it provides participation in being to everything that is; it gives fulfillment to that which it estranged.

GROUND OF BEING: God is being itself, beyond the contrast between essential and existential being. Therefore, it is not said that God exists; he is the ground of everything that exists. As the power of being, God transcends every being and also the totality of beings (the world). Being itself is beyond finitude and the infinite. Everything finite participates in being itself and in its infinity. God is the substance of everything and yet transcends every finite being.

HUBRIS: Spiritual sin in which man disregards his limitations as a human being. Tempted by his potential infinity, he turns away

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from God as the guiding principle of his life; he then elevates himself to the center of himself and of his world-he tries to be divine. This is sin in its total form from which all other sins are derived. Hubris should not be translated as pride; pride is a moral quality, the opposite of humility. Hubris is not a special quality of man's moral character; it is the universal quality of self-elevation.

INFINITE: Without limits of any kind; subject to no external determination; the opposite of finite. As the negative character of the word indicates (non-finite), it is defined by the dynamic and free self-transcendence of finite being. Infinity is a directing concept, not a constituting one. It directs the mind to experience its own unlimited potentialities, but it does not establish an infinite being. It is a demand, not a thing. The human mind can endlessly transcend finite realities in the direction of the infinite, yet it always remains bound to the finite.

JESUS AS THE CHRIST: This sums up the entire Christian Gospel. It points to a particular man, Jesus of Nazareth, and declares what God has done through him. Jesus Christ is not a first and last name, but Jesus as the Christ is the statement that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ; that is, the Messiah who was expected to come to establish the reign of God in Israel and in the world, to bring the new state of things. Thus the Christ-event has two sides-the historical fact which is Jesus of Nazareth, and the reception of this fact by those who received him as the Christ. The final and complete revelation of God was made known by way of this man named Jesus. Christianity was born when Jesus was proclaimed the Christ, and it will live as long as people repeat this assertion in his power.

LOGOS: Reason, pattern of rationality, word; the principle of divine self-manifestation in God and the universe, in nature and history, in Christ and the Bible, in the Church and its members. The meaningful structure of reality and the structure of the mind that enables it to grasp and to transform reality. The logos apparent in the Old Testament and other religions and philosophies became flesh in Jesus as the Christ. The universal principle of divine self-manifestation came to concrete reality in a personal life-process in historical existence as a saving participant in the human predicament, reuniting that which was estranged (central Christian

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paradox). The manifestation of the logos in the Christ is the basis for the Christian claim to be the universal and absolute religion.

MYTH: A parable or word picture that uses the language of time and space to give meaning to spiritual involvement; the meaning of the whole is expressed in symbols and objects. A myth differs from fact in that a fact is an historical event related as accurately as possible. A myth differs from a legend in that a legend develops the universal qualities of particular stories which may or may not be historically true. A myth cannot be taken literally, or it becomes nonsense. The subject matter of a myth is a matter of faith.

NEW BEING: Under the conditions of existence, man's being is unable to overcome estrangement or to achieve reunion with God, his world, and himself; therefore, the reunion of the estranged must come from another source-a New Being. Only a New Being can produce a new action. The New Being appears in Jesus as the Christ, as God makes himself manifest to man. It points to the power in him to live under the same conditions of existence as man and yet be able to resist the forces of estrangement and never lose his unity with God. In the Christ the New Being is real; it is the reestablished unity between God and man. In Jesus as the Christ is the coming of a new eon, the new state of things. The New Being is the healing and saving power in all history. To experience the New Being means to experience the power which has conquered estrangement in Jesus as the Christ and in everyone who participates in him.

NON-BEING: The "not yet" and the "no more" of being. The shock of the possibility of non-being produces the question of being (what is really real?). Non-being is the eternal threat to being; it is resistance to and perversion of being. Non-being is not the void left when everything has been substracted away. Non-being includes potential being which is "not-yet-being." But it is not nothing; it is real, not just a logical possibility. Non-being is not a second reality alongside being (God). Non-being points to the negative side of the mystery of being; it is the abysmal element in the ground of being. In God, being and non-being are dialectically related, though being always precedes non-being in ontological validity.

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ONTOLOGY: The study of the nature of being. It analyzes the structures of being which we necessarily encounter in every Meeting with reality. The ontological question (i.e., the nature of being), comprises the very heart of all philosophies; they are concerned with what is really real. No philosophy completely answers the question of being; the questions raised by ontological analysis find their answers in the God who reveals himself.

PARADOX: That which contradicts opinion or expectation based on the whole of ordinary human experience. It is not irrational, absurd, or dialectical; it means that which stands against man's self-understanding and expectation. The Christian paradox is the appearance of the Christ or the New Being, living under the same conditions of existence as man, yet judging and conquering them for himself and for man. Only statements which relate to this event arc truly paradoxical. The paradox of the New Being is an offense against man's reliance upon himself, his efforts to save himself, and his eventual resignation to despair. Against these three attitudes Christ as the New Being is both judgment and promise. The Christian paradox is a new reality, not a logical riddle.

PARTICIPATION: A man exists as an individual, but he participates in the whole universe, both consciously and unconsciously, through the rational structure of mind and reality. When individualization reaches its perfect form, which we call "a person," participation reaches the perfect form which we call "communion." Man participates in all levels of life, but only fully with another person. Insofar as he has reality, man is said to participate in the power of being. Alan's predicament rises from his participation in estranged existence; man's healing comes from participation in the New Being.

POLAR-CONCEPT: Two competing and balancing forces or poles, diametrically opposite in nature and competing for their share of the balanced whole or polarity. In every polarity each pole cannot exist without the other; each is limited as well as sustained by the other. If either pole tends to draw away from the other, tension results. The person falls into the anxiety of not being a balanced whole, of disintegrating and falling into non-being. Three major polar concepts constitute the basic structure of being: individuality-participation; dynamics-form; freedom-destiny.

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PREDICAMENT: The state of anxiety and estrangement in which essential elements are in combination with existential elements. Man becomes anxious about his finitude when he realizes that he belongs with the infinite but knows that he exists as a finite being and is estranged from his essential nature. Predicament is involvement in the existential structures of destruction (e.g., the loss of the self and world). The state of predicament is not an external force acting on the world but is a consequence of estrangement. The anxiety heightened by man's predicament leads to despair and self-destruction.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE: The act of going beyond oneself in order to return to oneself in a new dimension. It is man reaching or searching beyond himself with openness. Self-transcendence finds fulfillment in the experience of the holy, in transcending ordinary experience without removing it. It is the possibility and actuality of personal encounter with God.

SIN: A broken relationship with God; not disobedience to the law; man's turning away from that to which he belongs, resulting in his estrangement from God; a cleavage or split between Creator and creature; a separation of the holy and secular. Sin is a universal fact (destiny) which becomes an individual act (freedom) including responsibility and personal guilt. Sin is expressed as unbelief, hubris, concupiscence.

SPIRIT (Divine): That which is able to transform and unite. It is a divine power that grasps the self, thus enabling the center of being to be changed or transformed and to be capable of receiving saving power. Characteristics of this transforming Spirit are faith (as against unbelief), surrender (as against hubris), and love (as against concupiscence). Jesus as the Christ is a creation of the Divine Spirit. Those who participate in the Christ are made new creatures by the Spirit. Spirit is the third part of the Trinity, uniting the other two, Father and Son. Spirit is God "going out from himself" in order to unite others with Him-Christ, man, the Church.

STRUCTURE OF DESTRUCTION (evil): It does not have independent existence, but depends on created structures in the world. Estranged from God, the marks of finitude become evil or structures of destruction. The basis of this evil is finite freedom. Man is able to transcend his environment; is free to make his world his

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own; is free to make himself an object of his world (self-centeredness), thus losing himself and his world (self-loss and world-loss). Suffering, doubt, despair, insecurity, uncertainty, and loneliness all become elements of destruction when man is cut off from God,

SYMBOL: A medium through which the material of ordinary experience is used in speaking of God, without the word being taken literally. A symbol enters into the reality that it represents; a sign does not necessarily participate in that to which it points. Religious symbols are two-fold: (1) directed toward the infinite (Divine) which they symbolize, and (2) directed toward the finite (human) through which they symbolize it. Examples: transcendental fall; Son of God; wrath of God.

TEMPTATION: This presupposes finite freedom. It is the state of man's anxiety or indecision-the anxiety of deciding whether to preserve his innocence or whether to experience actuality through knowledge, power, and guilt. Temptation presupposes want and desire, man's desire to actualize or fulfill his potentialities. It is his desire to remove himself from the divine center and to make himself existentially the center of himself and his world in his search for fulfillment. The possibility of transition from dreaming innocence to existence is experienced as temptation.

THEOLOGY: Theology gives religious answers derived from the Christian revelation to the problems of existence developed by philosophical analysis. It is the methodical interpretation of the contents of the Christian faith. It must relate divine and eternal truth to the present generation. It relates reason and revelation, being and God, existence and the Christ (Vol. II), life and the Spirit, history and the Kingdom of God. These are the five parts in this Systematic Theology.

ULTIMATE CONCERN: That which is unconditional, total, infinite, with no dependence on conditions of character, desire, or circumstance; opposed to preliminary concerns. Concern points to the existential character of religious experience. It is concrete; it is that which grasps man; it is a matter of infinite passion and interest. Man's ultimate concern is about his being and meaning of life, its structure, and his aim in existence; it is that which has threatening and saving power. It is that to which man belongs and from which he is separated, and to which lie longs to be reconciled. When the

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Spirit grasps, shakes, transforms, or moves man, ultimate concern is being actualized.

UNBELIEF: Not the unwillingness or inability to believe the doctrines of the Church. Unbelief means the act or state in which man in the totality of his being turns away from God. He turns toward himself and his world, and loses his essential unity with the ground of his being and his world. Unbelief is the disruption of man's cognitive participation in God; the separation of his will from the will of God; the empirical shift from the blessedness of the divine life to the pleasures of a separated life. It is man's estrangement from God in the center of man's being.

WORD: A symbol of divine self-manifestation or revelation, an awareness of what is present and known and need not be spoken. Word is a symbolic way of speaking of the total being of Jesus the Christ, of which spoken words and deeds are an expression. Word is the medium through which God expresses or reveals himself to man. especially through Jesus the Christ. The Bible is often spoken of as the Word because it is a document of revelation. Word, then, is God manifest in Christ, in creation, in the history of revelation and the final revelation, in the Bible, in the words of the Church and her members.